INFORMATION ABOUT PROJECT,
SUPPORTED BY RUSSIAN SCIENCE FOUNDATION

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COMMON PART

Project Number23-18-00393

Project titleRussia and the West viewing each other: Literature at the intersection of culture and politics, XX century.

Project LeadPanova Olga

AffiliationA.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature the Russian Academy of Sciences,

Research area 08 - HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, 08-452 - Literary science

Keywordsliterary connections, Russia/USSR, Western Europe, America, literature and culture, literature and politics, literature and ideology, cultural diplomacy, travelogue, imagology.

PROJECT CONTENT

Annotation
A new large-scale project is dedicated to the topical issue of literary and cultural ties between Russia/USSR and Western countries in the context of the social history of the 20th century. and is intended to significantly expand the range of already mastered material and the field of research, to present angles and aspects of the topic that have not previously received scientific coverage. Modeling the image of the Other and affirming one's own national and cultural identity are two sides of a single process, the course of which is captured in the texts of Western authors about Russia / the USSR and Russian / Soviet authors about the West. They contain the main ideas of Russia and the West about each other; these ideas were largely determined by the ideological, political and cultural confrontation and had a retroactive influence on politics, ideology, and culture. The project examines the role of literary interaction between the USSR and Western countries in different historical periods - from the creation of the "Literary International" under the auspices of the Comintern, the movement of anti-fascist popular fronts, alliances during World War II, mutual confrontation during the Cold War and up to the Thaw, detente and, finally, the “perestroika” of the 1980s. The aim of the study is a comprehensive, structuring approach to the history of Soviet-Western literary relations, which highlights the following main areas: literary policy (state and party control, literary institutions, publishing strategies, royalties; cultural diplomacy, literary awards and anniversaries, etc.) ; problems of literary reception (literary reputations; readers' feedback; critical evaluations, etc.); comparative literary imagology; writers' contacts and literary relations; writers’ travels and travelogues. Among the specific topics of the research in these areas will be: the history of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Literature, International Union of Revolutionary Writers, John Reed Clubs, League of American Writers, Bund proletarisch-revolutionärer Schriftsteller, Association des ecrivains et des artistes révolutionnaires, PEN clubs, etc.; magazines and journal that acted as intermediaries (such as “International Literature”, “Das Wort”, “New Masses”, “Soviet Literature”, “Britfnskii Soyuznik”, “Inostrannaia literatura”); Soviet contacts of H. Barbusse, R. Rolland, A. Zegers, L. Feuchtwanger, P. Istrati, T. Dreiser, B. Shaw, H. Fast, Ramón J. Sender, etc.; the role of M. Koltsov, K. Simonov, B. Polevoy, A. Chakovsky and others as Soviet literary diplomats; the socio-political context of literary awards, anniversaries, plans for publishing foreign literature (OGIZ-GIKHL, Foreign Language Publishing House, literary magazines). A large array of new archival materials is introduced into scholarly use, including those that rarely come to the attention of literary historians: personal files of writers in the Comintern Archive, internal writers’ dossiers compiled by the Foreign Commission of the Union of the Soviet Writers and the FBI (recently declassified files), documents of press and publications divisions of the Western communist parties (Russian State Archive of Social and Political History), information reports made by employees of Soviet embassies, records of oral writers' travel stories ("oral writer's travelogues"), writers’ creative materials (Henri Barbusse's work on the book "Stalin", Upton Sinclair’s attempt to find a Soviet co-author for the novel "Red Gold", M. Apletin's unpublished book "Romain Rolland, a Friend of the USSR", etc.). A series of research articles and an academic book series prepared in the course of the project should be a significant contribution to the study of the Russia-West mutual perceptions, and will allow to analyze the process of their formation, to trace their evolution in the 20th century.

Expected results
The expected results of the project and their significance correspond to the actual theoretical and applied problems of modern humanities related to the study of the interaction of various national cultures. The project will identify, systematize and study many new, both particular and general phenomena in the field of literary history, political and public life from the perspective of the experience of mutual relations between Soviet Russia and the West during the 1920s - early 1980s. Scientific developments on a wide range of these issues, largely based on the previously unused (archival) materials, will be presented in the following ways: Creation of the academic book series “Russia and the West: viewing each other” (a tentative title) to publish scholarly books (companions and monographs) introducing into scholarly use archival documents and materials (annotated publications, critical apparatus). Publication of 7 volumes of the series by the end of 2025. Publication of 52 articles in scholarly periodicals, including 35 articles in the journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus, 5 in the journals indexed in the RSCI. Typological classification of the text corpus (Western texts about Russia / USSR and vice versa), based on a thorough analysis of a vast variety of textual sources and presented in scholarly articles, books of the academic series “Russia and the West: viewing each other”. Site development, upgrade and maintenance, regular posting online textual and visual materials. Creation of a bibliography of foreign literature in the Soviet periodicals of the 1920s-1940s. Creation of the iconographic collection "Literary Journeys" (based on archival sources). Organization of 3 international conferences, publishing of the conferences proceedings in public domain; conducting regular seminars (at least 9 per year) and round tables on the subject of the project in 2023-2025. A comprehensive study of the vast array of texts by Russian authors on Western countries and by Western authors on Russia / USSR, elaboration of the principles of their scholarly publication will be a significant contribution in the study of the global problem – communication between Russia and the world. The testimonies of intellectuals – writers, scholars, cultural figures –reveal clearly and fully the literary, cultural and human dimension of relations between countries and peoples, which makes the basis for political and international contacts. Modeling the image of the “other” is closely connected with the search and assertion of national cultural identity. Currently, this issue has become particularly relevant and is being actively discussed in public, mainly in media and press. An objective, solid, well-founded academic analysis of the problem based on primary sources, devoid of myths and stereotypes, is much more meaningful, relevant and useful. The research project that uses the diverse capabilities of the scientific infrastructure (an academic book series, publication of scholarly monographs, articles in scholarly journals, conferences, an Internet website,) will lead to a considerable progress in investigating and solving this problem. In general, new topics and material, an integrated approach to their study promise to yield results that correspond to the world level of contemporary humanities. The scientific outcome of the project will be in demand by the specialists in the field of theory and history of literature, philosophy, culture studies, sociology. The practical significance of the study lies in the possibility of using its results in higher education – for textbooks and manuals, innovative lecture courses, seminars and workshops on the history and sociology of literature, social thought and political culture of the 20th century.

REPORTS